"It's sort of characteristic of everything that happened at that time," said Guman, who played for Paterno at Penn State from 1976 to 1979 after starring at Bethlehem Catholic. "I think a lot of decisions were knee-jerk reactions … and it just seems like maybe now people are starting to realize there were some rash judgments made at the time."

Critics of Paterno's firing — and Corbett and the university trustees who placed blame on Paterno — were quick to respond to Corbett's comments reported Friday by the Philadelphia Inquirer that Paterno "probably" should not have been fired for his role in the scandal.

The lame-duck governor told the Inquirer that Paterno should have been suspended for the final three games of the 2011 season instead because he "technically complied with the law" in his dealings with Sandusky, his longtime assistant coach.

Penn State trustee Anthony Lubrano said Corbett's statement makes him appear to be a poor politician.

"Maybe that's something he should have thought about before the election," he said.

Lubrano said he has no doubt that Corbett's role in the board's response to the Sandusky scandal had a role in his loss Tuesday.

"I hope he remembers for the rest of his life because there are a lot of people in the Penn State community who aren't fans of him," Lubrano said.

Corbett's remarks, coming two days after becoming the first incumbent Pennsylvania governor since 1968 to lose a re-election bid, can't undo that wrong, Guman said, but they can contribute to repairing the coach's legacy.

Paterno was accused of inadequately reporting an allegation that Sandusky had molested a boy in a campus shower. Rather than contact police, Paterno passed the information on to two other school officials for investigation.

Paterno was fired by the board of trustees over the phone, ending a 46-year head coaching tenure. He died less than three months later.

"My hope is that at some point in time people, the school, the state, the country recognizes the contributions that Joe Paterno made and the man that he was, and not think of him in regard to that period in November 2011," Guman said.

Tom Flad of Bethlehem Township, a 1974 graduate, called Corbett's comments "laughable," and said Friday that the governor is concerned with repairing his own legacy — not Paterno's.

Flad, a devoted Penn State alum who donated $4 million to the school a few years ago, was shocked and appalled when Paterno was fired. Flad placed blame on Corbett, who sat on the university's board of trustees as governor.

The Paterno firing was one of the reasons why Flad didn't vote for Corbett for a second term, and Corbett's remarks Thursday make it seem he's trying to shift the blame for Paterno's firing, Flad said.

"It's Corbett trying to repair his legacy," he said. "It makes you angry. He's the one who fired Paterno."

Corbett, a non-voting member of the board of the trustees as governor, told the Inquirer that Paterno "technically" complied with the child reporting rules, and seemed to waver on whether Paterno deserved to be fired.

"If it was clear he understood and did not do anything, yeah. But I'm not so sure it was clear to him. And technically, he complied with the law," Flad said.

Days after the Paterno firing in November 2011, Corbett was a little more emphatic about the coach's role in the scandal.

He said in an interview on national television that the state attorney general had determined that the coach had not done "anything that would be of a criminal nature."

"But in my opinion, when you don't follow through, when you don't continue on to make sure that actions are taken, then I lose confidence in your ability to lead. That would be the case here," Corbett had said.

While Corbett is correct that Paterno complied technically with the child-abuse reporting statute in place at the time, the suggestion that he was without blame in the Sandusky scandal is insulting to victims, said Temple University law professor Barbara Ashcroft, a former sex-crime prosecutor.

"I think this is a terrible message to victims, children who are victims of sex crimes," she said.

Paterno's main involvement in the Sandusky case came in 2001 when then-graduate assistant football coach Mike McQueary reported to Paterno that he had seen Sandusky in a locker room shower with a boy. Paterno then reported what McQueary told him to his boss, then-athletic director Tim Curley.

Although Curley and then-Vice President for Business and Finance Gary Schultz met with McQueary to hear what he witnessed first-hand, prosecutors allege they eventually backed down from a plan to report Sandusky's conduct to his charity for at-risk children, The Second Mile, or law enforcement.

"Technically, when you read the statute, [Paterno's] obligation was to immediately notify the person in charge of the institution," Ashcroft said.

Curley and Schultz had the obligation to report the suspected abuse to law enforcement. But if Paterno did nothing further, and knew that his superiors intended not to report the incident, he had a moral and ethical obligation to go to authorities, she said.

"He didn't comply with the spirit of the law. He didn't comply with the Legislature's intent of the law," she said.

Pennsylvania's child-abuse reporting laws have since been strengthened to require anyone who works at a public institution to report suspected abuse directly to the Department of Public Welfare.

Corbett seems to be saying that by virtue of a loophole that existed at the time, Paterno should be forgiven for not doing more, Ashcroft said.

"It seems like he's trying to apologize somehow for Paterno not getting to coach the last three games. That somehow is more significant than all of the victims who were molested by Sandusky," she said.

"There is a much bigger picture here. If someone had directly reported this, there wouldn't be nearly as many victims," Ashcroft said.